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Prize Oration : 



Why 

Abraham Lincoln 
was Successful 
as an Orator. 



William 
Ramsey 
Probasco. 



Why Abraham Lincoln Was Successful as an 
Orator* 

Why is an orator successful ? What hidden power 
of genius enables one man to attack a multitude, flood 
it with powerful feelin2:s, one moment thrilling with 
ardor and zeal, and another shrunken into wails of 
deep despair, swelling forth again into calmness, reas- 
surance and strength ? What was there in the brain, 
the moral fiber, nay, the whole physical build of 
Abraham Lincoln that convinced the people of the 
truths he uttered, made them recognize him as their 
leader, exalt him to the first place of honor in this 
country, and crown his martyred head with wreathed 
laurels? 

" Powers above powers ! Oh, heavenly Eloquence, 
That with the strong reins of commanding words 

Dost manage, guide and master the eminence 
Of man's affections, more than all their swords." 

An orator of the type of Abraham Lincoln must 
be founded upon honesty, fearlessness and intelligence 
by which he raay furnish words of import to convey 
his own emotions and convictions, his very individu- 
ality, to the minds and souls of his hearers. ** Hon- 



est Abe " shall long continue to characterize Abraham 
Lincoln among those who take the roles of honesty. 
At twenty-two he said: " My politics are short and 
sweet like the old woman's dance. I ain in favor of 
the internal improvement policy and a high protective 
tariff. These are my sentiments and political princi- 
ples. If elected, I shall be thankful ; if not, it w411 be 
all the same." This, emphasized by his familiar man- 
ner, his plain appearance and ungainly figure, car- 
ried conviction of the truth of his utterance to his au- 
dience. 

Grand as may be the honesty of our hero, and es- 
timable as ma}^ be his courage, in living the honest 
man, still grander and more estimable was the intellect 
of his self-cultured mind. No orator but he of simple 
words can convince. And to convince is the goal of 
successful oratory. Simple and expressive words are 
most often spoken by the savage, the child and the 
learned man. Intelligence breeds brevity and simplic- 
it}^ in the complex ideas of an adult, while both are 
present and necessary in the limited vocabulary of 
the infant and the vSavage. Simple words were 
with Lincoln axioms born of simple thought. His 
intellect was nurtured by thought. He probably 
thought more and read less than any other man of his 
sphere in America. Mr. Lincoln's aim as an orator 
was, in his ow^n words, to convince, rather than to 
amuse. Tiie catholicity of his mind, combined with 






great depths of emotion and a rational intellect, made 
the words that he uttered so comprehensi])le to all. 

He found it difficult to speak when he had noth- 
ing to say, but he was unable to find anything to say 
unless his sympathies were engaged. Let him find 
himself in a position to say something, and let his 
easily aroused emotions be loosed, and his whole being 
would burst forth from its imprisonment with great 
thoughts and burning words. He once had occasion 
to picture a perjurer in a murder trial, which he did 
in a manner so ghastly and so horrid that the accused 
could sit under the strain but a few short moments, 
when he reeled and staggered from the court room, 
while the audience fancied they could see the brand 
upon his head. 

" Lincoln's goodness and intelligence combined to 
make their best result in wisdom." He had no arti- 
ficial aids. He merely proved the weapon of finest 
steel in the fire in which he was tested. His was the 
steel of the finest grain of w^isdom. It was the wisdom 
which knows that man is only human ; and, when he 
spoke, he knew his audience and spoke in their own 
tongue. Although he devoured the Bible and Shakes- 
peare, he seldom quoted. He succeeded in putting the 
plain facts before the eyes of his audience and guided 
their minds accurately with unerring logic. His con- 
clusions had more reasons for belief than for disbelief. 

3 



The people perceived in him a sensible man and be- 
lieved what he said. 

Unlike other speakers, he was accustomed to 
plunge right into his serious argument, leaving the 
emotional treatment to the close. When he spoke be- 
fore the Illinois Convention, he said : "Gentlemen of 
the Convention : If we could first know where we are 
tending, we could then better judge what to do and 
how to do it. We are now part on into the fifth year 
since the policy was initiated, with the avowed object 
and confident promise of putting an end to slavery agi- 
tation. Under the operation of that policy, that agita- 
tion has only not ceased but has constantly augmented. 
In my opinion, it will not cease until a crisis shall have 
been reached and passed. 'A house divided against 
itself can not stand.' I believe this Government can 
not endure permanently, half slave and half free." 
With his tremendous knowledge of nature and human 
kind he adapted his words to the feelings of the people 
and drew their conclusions for them. His were the 
conscious declarations of a leader. His audience 
reached out for his convictions, and, finding them, 
held fast. 'Twould have been easj^ for Mr. Lincoln to 
have said, as did the friend of Sempronius : 

" 'Tis not in mortals to command success, 

But we'll do more, Sempronius — we'll deserve it." 

In his orator}' at debate we seldom find the intro- 
duction of amusing stories to appeal to the crowd. 



His words, like his thoughts, were simple, but wrought 
with dignity. He introduced figures judiciously to 
make his meaning clear or the words of his opponent, 
ridiculous. Hearken, "A house divided against itself 
cannot stand," and "A living dog is better than a 
dead lion." Although his debates are free from the 
vulgarity of the amusing, his use of metaphorical ex- 
pressions is unerring and invariably hits the striking 
point of his adversary's contentions. 

Mr. lyincoln's speeches at debate were funds of 
fact. Douglass, the little giant, spoke with brilliancy, 
used ** long- tailed words that end in 'ossity and 'ation," 
and affected his audience with splendid bursts of emo- 
tion, but his footing would crumble under the unmer- 
ciful logic of his opponent, who, augmented in strength, 
as the tentacled truth of facts gripped the foundation 
upon which his judgments rested. 

Mr. Lincoln thought for the w^hole Nation. As 
an orator, he spoke for it ; as a patriot, he died for it. 

The phj^sical ideal of an orator changed with the 
advent of Abraham lyincoln. His were the looks of 
the ordinary, ugly man. He was tall, often poorly 
dressed, on the w^hole unfit to meet the beau ideal of 
an orator. But those who have seen him loved him, 
and those who have heard him, believed him. His 
voice was the voice of sympathy, his words were the 
words of reason and hope. 

Be it as it may, in i860, Abraham Lincoln, the man, 
5 



the statesman and the orator, found himself nominated 
for the Presidency of the United States. Eastern men 
of New York and Boston, ignorant tiien, as today, of 
some things and men in the Far West that are quite as 
nice as those reared in Boston or New York, rather 
gasped at the popularity of the rail-splitter, the man of 
common parentage and a reader of newspapers. They 
clamored to judge for themselves as to the nature of 
their nominee. So Mr. Lincoln, in long coat and stove 
pipe hat, traveled on to New York, where he met the 
intelligence and culture of the northern Nation gath- 
ered en masse at Cooper Institute Hall. With sheer 
intellect and logic he mastered his audience, and with 
a single, easy, simple sentence of Anglo-Saxon words, 
containing chapters of history, he showed the ac- 
quisition of months of patient investigation. He 
showed them self-mastery, an understanding of the 
sequence of events, causes for secession of the South, 
and the only means for the preservation of the Union, 
concluding with the words : *' Neither let us be slan- 
dered from our duty by false accusations against us, 
nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction to the 
Government, nor of danger to ourselves. Let us have 
faith that right makes might, and in that faith let us 
to the end dare to do our duty as we understand it," 
he succeeded in making an impression upon a New 
York audience the like of which no man had ever made 
before. 



In his first inaugural address he said : " We are 
not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. 
Though passion nia}^ have strained, it must not break 
our bonds of affection." He spoke, not from the 
heights of the ruler's platform as to his subjects, but 
on the ground of eqnalitj', as to his friends. His was 

the 

" Eloquence that charms and Imrns, 
Startles, soothes and wins by turns." 

We may say much, we may think much, and still 
do no more than wonder at the character of this man 
among men, this orator among orators. His own 
great character, the people of this country and the 
events of the day in which he lived combined to make 
his success as an orator true and unmistakable. 

He reached the highest round of oratorical fame 
when he spoke at Gettysburg. The few^ words that 
he delivered there rival Pericles' oration over the dead 
and enroll his name with Cicero and Marc Antony, 
with Burke and Webster. The closing lines run thus : 

"It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated 
here to the unfinished work which they who fought 
liere have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for 
us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining be- 
fore us — that from these honored dead we take in- 
creased devotion to that cause for which they gave the 
last full measure of devotion ; that w^e here highly re- 
solve that these dead shall not have died in vain ; that 

7 



this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of free- 
dom, and that government of the people, by the peo- 
ple, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." 

Here on this hallowed spot, lowly born but God- 
gifted, Abraham Lincoln concentrated all of his good- 
ness and greatness, all of his sympathy and love, and 
fashioned of it a lofty monument of oratory to which 
posterity turns its e5^es and finds thereon engraven, 
"Success." 

" Death makes no conquest of this eonqueror, 
For now he Hves in fame, though not in Hfe." 

Jones oratorical prize 
awarded May 2d, 
1902, at the Uni- 
versity of Cincin- 
nati. 



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